The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck

Named of the Top 100 Living Songwriters by Paste and "one of best songwriters of the '00's by Rolling Stone, John Darnielle tends to approach his own particular craft as the opportunity to tell stories and create fables, raising questions of love, morality and mortality. As frontman for eclectic trio The Mountain Goats, Darnielle mixes things up in a big way on new album All Eternals Deck (March 29, Merge), conspiring with four different producers in as many studios and cities to create a diverse album with a singular theme: the occult -- a word, he explains, that simply means "hidden" in medical terminology. "The songs cluster around themes of hidden things and the dread that hidden things inspire," says Darnielle, "but also the excitement, the attraction, the magnetic draw that scary unknown hidden things exert."

One of the big "unknowns" for Darnielle and band was, he reflects, "how disparate seasons and moods and locations and producers would play out in the songs." To that end, we get a shot of gangly, jangly rock n' roll ("Estate Sale Sign"), studied art-pop ("Damn These Vampires"), folky busking ("For Charles Bronson") and the moody melodic ("Sourdoire Valley Song"). At the heart of each is Darnielle's cerebral and artful lyricism and natural, happily untrained vocals, spinning phrases of wit and bite in an effortless and matter-of-fact simplicity. "The Age of Kings" is one of our favorites amid the many high points of All Eternals Deck, a low-keyed, gorgeously orchestrated track that creates a dramatic mood of tension and release. Stream the full album at NPR.

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The Mountain Goats - "Birth of Serpents" (from All Eternals Deck)

The Mountain Goats - "The Age of Kings" (from All Eternals Deck)